Microsoft has quietly confirmed that it is getting out of the encyclopedia business, ending its long-standing Encarta product.
As noted by Ars Technica, the software maker says it will discontinue all its online Encarta products by October, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will run through the end of the year. It will also stop selling Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium, paid software products that included the online encyclopedia.
In a posting on its Web site, Microsoft said that the move reflected the change in the way people use reference material. It didn't mention Wikipedia by name, but I think we all know the biggest change to encyclopedias to come around in recent memory.
"Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years," Microsoft said. "However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft's goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today's consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business."
The move is one of a relative handful of products that Microsoft has discontinued in the wake of expense cuts implemented in January, cuts that included the company's first across-the-board layoffs.
Last week, Microsoft said it was scrapping a Web analytics product that was in beta. In November, the company announced plans to stop selling its Windows Live OneCare antivirus product.
Microsoft has been publishing Encarta, in various forms, for more than a decade. It has also scooped up various print encyclopedias along the way, according to Wikipedia (I love irony). While the original Encarta was based on Funk and Wagnalls, Microsoft later bought Collier's Encyclopedia and New Merit Scholar's Encyclopedia and incorporated those two products into Encarta, again according to Wikipedia.
Updated at 12 p.m. PDT with news that the entry is now up for deletion.
(Credit:
Wikipedia/CNET News)
WASHINGTON, D.C.--In the real world, I changed my gender from male to female a few years back and haven't looked back. But on Wikipedia, my pronouns seem to be changing all the time.
In the last few weeks, there's been a debate as to whether "he" or "she" should be used on my page with different volunteer editors taking opposite positions on whether I am entitled to use female pronouns.
After several days of being "he" on Wikipedia, I was pleased Thursday to see that my pronouns had reverted back to the gender with which I identify.
Unlike in the journalism world, where the Associated Press Stylebook has a concrete answer on how to handle these sorts of things, there is no official "style" on gender matters or many other issues on Wikipedia. (Until a few years ago, one's anatomy or legal status dictated AP's assignment of pronouns. In recent years, though, the AP and other news organizations have adopted policies that transgender individuals should be referred to with the pronouns with which they themselves identify.)
In the unique world of Wikipedia, an article's contents can be changed repeatedly. That means that on matters that are in contention (and apparently my gender is one of those), things don't get settled but remain in flux. There's only one person who absolutely can't weigh in--the subject themselves.
While I find it somewhat confusing to have to log in each day to see what gender I am supposed to be, I have found the debate interesting.
And given that I am here in the nation's capital this week for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association annual conference, I thought it a fitting subject for this page as well.
Update at 12 p.m. PDT: Well, now the entry has had pronouns removed alltogether--a reasonable compromise in my opinion. However, the post is now up for deletion. If it's being deleted because I am not important enough for Wikipedia, that's something I can deal with. But I'd hate to think it's a matter of having a complicated gender.
REDMOND, Wash.--Aiming to build on the metaphor popularized by Wikipedia, a pair of Microsoft researchers have built Micropedia, an internal wiki cataloging every person and project within the company.
Microsoft researcher Steve Ickman said while the company's internal SharePoint site is great for some uses, there are some features that the Wikipedia engine has that are missing in Microsoft's product. One big thing is the engine's ability to archive. On the SharePoint site, typically only the current status of a project is shown.
"Once it's gone, it's gone," Ickman said of the SharePoint site. Micropedia, on the other hand, retains a sense of history, noting a past project and who worked on it, even if it involved people no longer at the company.
"I am a huge fan of wikis," he said. To populate the site, Microsoft Research's Tom Laird-McConnell mined the company's directory, creating a page for each employee as well as a page for each project that someone is or has been working on. The site allows anyone in the company to comment on a person or project and also displays in a separate pane any information found on the public Wikipedia.
Laird-McConnell said that by making the Wiki available company-wide, it would be easier for people in one part of Microsoft to know what those in other parts of the company are doing. Microsoft's current tools are largely organized by teams and are heavily permission-based.
"There's very little cross-collaboration," he said.
The Micropedia approach is similar conceptually to a tool used within Google where any employee can see what any colleague is working on.
For now, fewer than a dozen people, all in research, are using Micropedia, but its creators would like it to see it used throughout the company.
Microsoft has a wiki.
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